


Only An Ocean of Blood

by voices_of_salt



Series: The Riera Cycle [8]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Clan Blanxart, Darkest Timeline, Interrogation, Other, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 19:55:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9458111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voices_of_salt/pseuds/voices_of_salt
Summary: A vision of a darkest timeline in which Mercedes loses her brother, but never finds the party.





	

> _"There are ways of dying that don’t end in funerals."_  - Haruki Murakami

“Damn, I had hoped to get a swim in before we weigh anchor. Needs must, I suppose.”

Stepping into her cabin, Mercedes sighed and handed her hat and coat to a waiting sailor. She wrinkled her nose at the stench, strode to the stern gallery windows – an expanse of sloping glass looking out over the startling blue of the Lafanese Sea – and opened one.

Her ship rode at single anchor off a tiny island, rocking gently in the swell. The noonday sun sparkled on the water, sending reflected lines of pale gold dancing across the inside of the captain’s cabin. Compared to the blinding sunlight outside, the whitewashed cabin almost seemed dim. A warm breeze drifted in the open window, carrying the sharp, salt scent of the sea.

Turning, Mercedes faced the man tied to the chair. “I suppose a lovely afternoon swim is just another thing you’ve taken from me, hmm?”

Her guest had a sailor’s build and the olive skin of an Islander. His salt-and-pepper hair hung in filthy tangles over his shoulders, and a three-days’ growth of silver stubble covered his cheeks. Yet despite this, and despite rumpled, bilge-stained clothes (which might once have been blue, white, and grey), his dark eyes eyes burned with defiance.

“Before we start,” she said, “let me save us some time by making my position clear.”

She drew her cutlass and drove the guard hard into the man’s face in one swift movement. His head snapped back. Mercedes could feel the crunch of cartilage through the metal of the guard. Grinning, she looked down at her prisoner.

“Now, Don Salvador – can I call you Vadó? – let’s talk.”

Don Salvador Augusté Lope de Marina i Blanxart de Isla Garroxta, Chieftain of Clan Blanxart, raised his head up with a groan. The blood from his broken nose dribbled down his face, unbelievably red in the brilliant sunlight flooding the cabin. He spat at her feet. A shattered fragment of tooth hit the deck in a blob of pink spittle.

“Bitch!”

Mercedes inclined her head.

The sea breeze was doing wonders for the cabin. The rank scents of blood, old sweat, bilgewater, and piss clinging to the don were less overpowering now.

“I have a few questions,” she said conversationally, “and you’re going to answer them.”

She paced before the windows, tapping her cutlass against her shoulder, looking out where some of her men and women were swimming and lounging on the island’s black sandy beach. From here, it looked like one of her first cousins had started some sort of water fight. Traces of her fond smile still lingered as she turned to face the Blanxart chieftain.

“So, Vadó, where’s the rest of your clan?”

“Fuck you!” His voice was already muffled-sounding from his swelling nose.

“Very well, let’s try something else: where are the rendezvous points with Clan Costa?”

The man gave her a red and pink grin. “Go ahead and kill me: I won’t tell you a thing.”

Mercedes blinked at him. “Do you truly not understand how this works? Do I have to do the ‘by the time I’m done with you, you’ll beg for death’ thing? I don’t want to: it sounds like a line from a bad mummer’s play.”

“Go fuck your ancestors, Riera.”

Mercedes came close and settled herself on Salvador Blanxart’s knees, tracing the bruised line of his jaw with one finger. “Oh Vadó, you’re making this so much more of a production than it needs to be.” He tried to lunge forward and headbutt her, but was bound too tightly to the chair. Mercedes’ smile widened.

“If you’d just give me your word and answer my questions, I swear I wouldn’t hurt a hair on your head: I’d leave you on that nice little island out there, with food and water to spare. Oh wait,” she said, affecting sudden remembrance, “your word is worth shit. You broke your oath. Your whole clan did.”

“We never did! You’re fucking crazy!”

Something flickered in Mercedes’ dark eyes, and she rose from Salvador Blanxart’s lap, looming over him. Her knuckles were white on the hilt of her cutlass. “We were sworn allies, Don Blanxart, and your people let my kinsfolk – let my _brother_ – get captured without lifting a finger. Does that sound like a thing allies do?”

“This again? They outnumbered us! We couldn’t –”

Sunlight flashed on steel as Mercedes’ cutlass hissed through the air. Two thuds and a wet pattering followed. The end of the chair arm and the don’s severed hand lay on the deck, his wrist jetting out bright spurts of blood. Salvador Blanxart’s scream of shock and pain went on and on, filling the close space of the cabin.

The sound seemed to drive Mercedes mad. Her lips writhed back from her teeth in a snarl, and her sword clattered forgotten to the deck as she lunged at the bound man, her hands outstretched like claws. They tightened around his windpipe, and her weight and momentum bore them both to the deck. The back of the chair and of Salvador Blanxart’s head struck the deck with a resounding crack.

“What do _you_ have to wail about?” Mercedes crouched on Don Blanxart’s chest like a night-hag, hair straggling wildly around a face contorted with rage. “You know nothing of pain! You lost a hand! A hand!” She screamed. “I lost half of my soul!”

His eyes bulged as he fought for breath, and gouts of hot blood spattered them both.

“You could have fought! The rest of the fleet would have heard the cannon, they would have come to save you! You could have done something! You could have saved _him_ , coward!”

Mercedes released her grasp on the man’s neck. He gasped for air, then cried out again as she grabbed a fistful of his hair. She forced him to look at her. She was close enough to kiss, close enough that he could make out the pinpoint-pricks of her pupils.

“You could have saved him!” Mercedes shrieked again, the sound echoing back from the distant island shore.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry, you’re right!” Salvador Blanxart stammered, appalled at what he saw in her eyes. “You’re right: I’m a coward! I’m sorry!”

Mercedes released him and his head fell back to the deck with a heavy thud. She leaned back on his chest, breathing hard, brushing her hair away from her mouth. A dazed, almost post-coital calm glazed her eyes and made her hands tremble.

“Gràcies, Don Blanxart,” she murmured. Rising slowly to her feet, she moved to the window, her boots leaving red smears on the deck. “It means a great deal to hear you say that. It’s important, you know. For closure. That kind of thing.”

She took a deep breath and tucked her hair back into place under her kerchief with shaking hands. Bloodstained fingers lingered over the soft red wool. Slowly, tenderly, she closed her eyes and pressed it to her lips.

Her voice was thick when she next spoke: “Angelica, could you re-secure his arm? Clap a stopper over things?”

The attendant sailor came forward and heaved the chair upright again. With quiet efficiency, she lashed the man’s elbow to the chair and whipped blessed bandages around the bleeding limb.

“Good, good,” Mercedes said, turning back to her prisoner. “Wouldn’t want you moving around too much. Blood loss.” She gestured to his stump with her cutlass and he flinched. She smiled.

“You _are_ getting the idea, though, I see.”

The comfortable, homelike _clangclang-clangclang_ of four bells in the evening watch sounded through the ship. The ship’s cook could be heard for’rard bawling for more garlic. A celebratory feast was planned for tonight and apparently he was taking it out on the rest of the galley who would, as usual, weather the storm.

Mercedes stooped and retrieved the severed hand from the deck, lifting it between thumb and forefinger. “Forget about this. I’m sorry I lost my temper. No more shouting.”

Salvador Blanxart stared up at her, blood, snot, and tears running down his ashen face. She beamed.

“I’ll be nice, I promise. Here.” Mercedes tossed his hand into his lap where it landed with a slack-tendoned slap.

Grabbing a seat from her desk, she hauled it over and sat down facing her prisoner over the back of the chair, her cheek resting upon her folded arms. Lazily, she stretched out her leg and caught the guard of her cutlass with the toe of her boot. Flipping it up with her foot, she snatched it out of the air.

“So, Vadó.”

She tapped the wrist of his only remaining hand with flat of her blade, giving him a playful smile.

“Where is the rest of your clan hiding?”

 

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